Sé Catedral da Guarda

In the heart of Portugal’s highest city, Guarda Cathedral stands with the luminous severity of granite. Work began around 1390, in the reign of King John I, on the initiative of Bishop Vasco de Lamego, and continued for about a century and a half; from that long process came a building where Gothic and Manueline forms live together with remarkable ease. On the outside, its massive volumes, buttresses, octagonal towers and lace-like outline give it an almost military air, well suited to an old frontier city. Inside, the surprise is different: twisted columns, the vaulting and above all the great altarpiece in Ançã stone, made by João de Ruão in the sixteenth century, bring an unexpected richness of form. The cathedral is not striking only because of its scale. It is striking because it seems to gather, in one single body, the harshness of the mountain, the ambition of a royal building site and the patient faith of several generations.